by Nina Varela
She realized dimly that she was still holding the locket. She hadn’t let go of it, even during the commotion. Part of her wanted to throw it away, crush it beneath her foot. The clasp was broken, she couldn’t even wear it. Instead, she slipped it into her sleeve.
Already, it was a relic of a time before—a time before Crier could ever have imagined this happening.
Ayla.
Finally, the guards decided the room was safe. Crier looked around at the wreckage of her things—her books and maps everywhere, her desk drawers emptied, one of the bookshelves knocked over, her clothes strewn across the floor; one of the guards had even taken his sword to her mattress and pillows and now there were feathers dusted across the room like snow. Everything ruined. Crier felt a dull pang of loss for her books and maps, but couldn’t even think about the rest. Ayla.
“Come, my lady,” one of the guards said. “We have orders to take you to the sovereign’s study. It’s safe there.”
She didn’t bother snapping at them or trying to resist when they pulled her roughly to her feet. All the adrenaline, all the fight, had leached out of her, and now she was just—empty. She let the guards lead her through the dark halls of the palace. It was strange not seeing a single human servant. Crier wondered how many had been part of the attack. How many had been plotting to kill her?
They reached her father’s study. The guards pushed the door open, ushering Crier inside. Hesod was standing in the center of the room flanked by his own guards, and when he saw Crier his face collapsed in relief for a split second before smoothing out again. Crier wanted so badly to run forward into his arms. She wanted her father to hold her and tell her this had all been a terrible dream. But she was not supposed to do things like that, had been punished for it before. She held still.
“You are safe,” said Hesod.
She nodded.
“Do you require a physician?”
She shook her head.
“Well, sit by the fire,” Hesod said, scrutinizing her. “You look ill.”
Crier obeyed, taking a seat on the lip of the hearth, and a moment later Hesod draped a thin blanket over her shoulders. She must have looked something worse than ill if he was worrying over her like that. She wondered what her expression was doing. If he’d noticed her shaking hands.
Ayla was going to kill you. She wanted to kill you.
All this time—
Crier pulled the blanket tighter over her shoulders, even though she knew it would do nothing. There was no banishing this kind of cold. Ayla’s dagger hadn’t pierced her, but it might as well have: the cold felt like a knife blade lodged between Crier’s ribs. Surely she’d been wounded, somewhere unseen.
A guard came in and spoke to Hesod. About half of the rebels, by their calculations, had escaped, he said in a low murmur.
She didn’t know which ones hadn’t.
It was a new and humiliating level of pathetic: hoping that someone who had tried to kill her had escaped unscathed. She stared into the fire. The flames were so bright, burning white mouths eating the kindling. Then the door behind her swung open, creaking on its hinges. Crier straightened up automatically when Kinok, flanked by her father’s best guards, stepped inside. Kinok’s eyes were as flat and lightless as two black pools of ink.
“Clear the room,” Hesod ordered.
The guards hesitated.
“I said clear the room,” Hesod thundered, and the guards hurried out. He closed the door behind them and turned to face the study, now empty of everyone but himself, Kinok, and Crier. “Rise, daughter.”
Crier got to her feet, trying not to stumble on her stiff legs. She’d been so tense for hours. “Father, what—?”
“The guards are still searching the palace and all the surrounding lands for the human traitors,” said Hesod. “Barely two leagues to the south, they overtook a single courier bearing no colors, no crest. He attempted to run from them. As if he’d been expecting an interception. He did not succeed. The courier was carrying only one letter. A coded message to Queen Junn of Varn.”
It took everything to keep her expression curious instead of terrified. She was caught. Her father would have already put two and two together. The letter was stamped with Crier’s seal. Her personal seal. There was only one seal like that in the entire world and it was sitting on Crier’s writing desk. Crier had used it to make sure Junn opened her letter, but now it was nothing but a red arrow pointing directly at Crier’s face, a word emblazoned on her chest: TRAITOR.
She couldn’t look at her father. She was not ashamed of what she’d done, but like a stupid, selfish child, she was terrified of the consequences. She had committed treason against her own father. And—Kinok knew. She couldn’t look at him either. Had he already told Hesod about her fifth pillar? Did Hesod know his daughter was not just a traitor, but a mistake? A damaged thing?
“Father,” she started, “I—”
He held up a hand. “Crier. The letter bore your seal. Do you know what that means?”
She shook her head desperately. “Father, please—”
“There is a spy inside the palace.”
Crier pulled up short. She finally dared to meet her father’s eyes, and they were still furious, but—not at her. It was a faraway anger, directed at someone else. Sovereign Hesod had been betrayed, had been attacked, had been bested, and he wanted blood. But not hers.
“It had to be someone inside the palace,” he said quietly. “Someone with access to your bedchamber and your seal. Someone with a history of insubordination. Can you think of anyone who fits that description, daughter?” When Crier didn’t answer, his lips twisted into something that looked like a smile but was not. “Somehow you have become even softer than I feared. Tonight, the handmaiden attempted to kill you in your sleep. For months, perhaps years, she has been working with the Mad Queen to destroy us all from the inside out.”
“I didn’t know,” Crier whispered, too shocked to know what else to say. He’d gotten everything wrong. She was safe, for now, but Ayla . . .
“And now you do,” said Hesod. “And still you protect her with your silence.”
“Father . . .”
Hesod looked at her. He studied her face with the expression of someone attempting to read a passage written in a language they did not possess. Finally, he let out a slow breath. “Did I really Design you?” he murmured, more to himself than to her, and that was how Crier learned that pain was not finite; there was no limit to woundless hurt.
And she was mute.
Of course, she thought hollowly. Her father was fascinated by humans. He enjoyed reading about their gods, their songs, their stories and languages, their holy days, their strange rituals. But they were still animals to him. Oxen and dogs. They were not rulers; they were not daughters. Crier had always known that. She had always known that.
“Sovereign,” said Kinok, breaking the terrible silence. “With all due respect, the eyes of the world are watching you more closely than ever. Word will get out about tonight’s attack. We must prove to the world that Lady Crier is alive and well—and that your foothold in Zulla has not faltered.”
“And how do you suggest we do that, Scyre?” said Hesod.
“First,” said Kinok, “we move up the date of the wedding. There is too much time to plan another attack. Second, Lady Crier must be guarded at all times. She barely escaped with her life tonight.” He was so good at sounding concerned. It made Crier sick. “Third, we find the handmaiden, and we kill her.”
Crier’s eyes widened, but Hesod was already nodding. “Good counsel as always, Scyre Kinok,” he said. “You will be married in one week’s time. Assign four of the best guards to watch Lady Crier day and night. And yes, Scyre—do find the handmaiden. Bring me her head. I want to see it.”
Kinok nodded. “Of course, Sovereign.”
And he swept out of the room, leaving Crier and Hesod alone.
“Father—” she began.
“If you are about to ask fo
r the handmaiden’s life, daughter, I strongly suggest that you do not.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Crier said evenly. “I want nothing more than a small favor. Now that I am to be married in one week’s time, let me take three days to visit the Midwifery where I was built.” She ignored the way Hesod’s eyebrows rose, and thought quickly. “Let me Make a gift for my future husband. It was tradition once, wasn’t it, just like the Hunt? The bride gifting her betrothed a Made object, a clever trinket, a token of goodwill? Let me do that for Kinok, as a gesture of goodwill and faith in our future together. That is all I ask.”
Get me out of here. Away from him.
“Daughter, you were nearly killed tonight. Do you really think it safe to leave the palace?”
“We will tell no one where I am going. Not even Kinok. You and I will be the only ones who know. And you can send a dozen guards along with me. Two dozen. If the—the handmaiden was a spy, who knows how many other servants are working for the queen? Surely I am safer on the road than here.”
He considered it.
“Please, Father,” said Crier. “Just three days.”
“Fine,” said Hesod. “Three days.”
At the beginning of the War of Kinds, the bone beasts—soft-bodied and fragile, those of full mating age killed as easily as their maggot bairn—thought themselves kings of this land. By the end of it, the sky was black with the smoke of twenty thousand corpses, and the superior Kind had ascended to their rightful place.
The age of Automae as mere pets and possessions of humankind was over.
The Golden Era had begun.
—FROM THE ERA OF ENLIGHTENMENT,
BY IDONA OF FAMILY PHYRIS, 3382960905, YEAR 19 AE
24
There were two things that had changed since Ayla last visited the market at the heart of Kalla-den. The first was that Luna’s dress was finally gone. Torn to pieces by curious seagulls, maybe, or perhaps it had simply been carried off by a particularly strong gust of sea wind. No matter how it had happened, the result was the same: the dress was gone, and with it the ghostly presence of Luna that had once hung, like the dress, over the marketplace, a stark reminder that nobody there was ever safe, not really.
The second was that Ayla and Benjy were fugitives.
“There he is,” Benjy hissed in her ear. “There’s the bastard.”
She followed his gaze.
They were huddled behind a stack of oyster barrels in the market at Kalla-den. It was the second dawn since their attack, since Ayla had tried and failed to kill Crier. She and Benjy had spent the past day and night with one of Rowan’s old friends, a fisherman who lived in a tiny shack nestled into a crook of the sea cliffs, impossible to find unless you knew exactly where it was. He’d recognized Benjy’s face and granted them a hiding place while the sovereign’s guards searched all the nearby villages. Yesterday, they’d made contact with the owner of the fish cart, offered him all but a few of their pooled statescoins, plus Benjy’s grandfather’s watch, to turn a blind eye when they snuck onto his cart this morning in the busy hour right before dawn, when all the traders and traveling merchants—including the fish cart man—were heading into Kalla-den for the day, choking the streets. The plan was to spend the day in the village, buy or steal enough food for a three days’ journey, and then slip back onto the fish cart at sundown. From there, they’d leave Kalla-den, once again cloaked by movement and merchants, and the fish cart man would take them to the docks.
By then, night would have fallen. Black cliffs, black rocks, black water. There was no better time to become stowaways.
Everything had been going all right—they’d pilfered three days’ worth of bread and salted meat, hardtack, waterskins. Everything had been going according to plan.
But the damn fish cart wasn’t in the agreed-upon location.
It was across the market square, and as Ayla squinted at the fish cart man, she could tell there was something off about him. Something shifty in his movements.
“He’s going to leave without us,” she whispered, still staring at him. “Maybe he realized who we are.”
“Will you please keep your head down,” Benjy whispered back.
She risked looking at him. His face was mostly covered by a hood—they had both borrowed hooded cloaks from the fisherman—but Ayla could tell by the set of his mouth that he was in pain. He’d been hurt during the attack, a guard’s sword glancing off his left calf. The cut wasn’t deep enough to sever anything important, but it was still painful. Could still become infected, if they didn’t take care of it soon, and it made every step miserable for Benjy. His lips were pressed in a thin white line.
Ayla looked away. She was trying not to think about Benjy’s lips.
His kiss. Her knife. All of it for nothing.
She hadn’t managed to set off Crier’s chime, but that wasn’t why the plan had failed. Benjy and the other rebels had assumed something had gone wrong on her end and taken a chance, making their way to Kinok’s study even without the distraction. They’d made it into the study without being caught by the guards, they’d even found the safe hidden in the bookshelf—but when Benjy, the only one among them who could read the language of the Makers, had cracked the lock, they hadn’t found the compass that would lead them to the Iron Heart. They’d found something else entirely: a faded piece of parchment with three words on it.
Leo
Siena
Tourmaline
Her grandfather’s and grandmother’s names, and something else.
When they heard the guards raising the alarm, the rebels fled the study, taking the piece of parchment with them. As planned, they waited for Ayla in the music room, all of them wild-eyed and panting among the silent, beautiful instruments, like grave robbers in an untouched tomb.
Ayla didn’t know what expression she’d been wearing when she burst through the door, but Benjy took one look at her face and told the others, “Crier’s still alive. Run.” And they had: out the same window they’d stolen in through and then through the dark orchards, and none of them had stopped running until they’d left the palace grounds far behind them and were lost to the lightless hills between the palace and all the surrounding farms and villages. From there, Benjy and Ayla had split off, spent the night in the branches of some farmer’s sun apple tree, and made their way to the fisherman’s shack before dawn.
And now: fugitives. It was the only part of the plan that had gone as expected. But instead of glory—instead of the compass in their possession, the Iron Heart in their control, Kinok’s Movement under their foot, Crier’s heart in Ayla’s hands (no, pierced by her knife)—instead of glory, they were scattered. Ayla and Benjy had no way of knowing if the others had survived the night. They were on the run. Alone. Empty-handed, after giving all their coin to the man with the fish cart.
Oh, he was definitely going to leave without them. Take their coin and run.
“Bastard,” Ayla muttered.
But she didn’t get a chance to curse him any further, because her attention was drawn by a crash on the other side of the market, just a few stalls away from the fish cart. Her blood ran cold: guards. Half a dozen of them, all wearing the sovereign’s crest. As she watched, one of the soldiers upended a barrel, spilling oysters and brine all over the cobblestones. One of the human vendors shouted in outrage and another guard pushed him to the ground, sword aimed at his throat.
“We have to get out of here,” Ayla breathed.
“You’ll have to help me,” Benjy said tightly.
She looped her arm around his back, helping him to his feet. He leaned heavily on her, wincing with every step, and together they moved away from the market square as quickly as possible, sticking to the last shadows of the fading night. Somewhere to the east, the rising sun must be curling its fingers over the edge of the Steorran, staining the sky and water the palest palest pink, like the sheen of a pearl button.
There were two things that Ayla had wanted. The first was revenge. T
he second was something she would not admit to herself, could not put into words, because even thinking about it made her heart feel like a bridge giving way, tumbling down into water, all her pieces carried off by the current of something far older and more powerful than she was. Right now, Ayla had nothing but her pieces. She could not give way.
Slowly, with a hand pressed over her mouth. That was how Ayla left everything she’d ever known behind her, the sovereign’s palace and Kalla-den and the northern shores and somewhere among them the village she’d been born in, Delan, all of it now at her back. And those three words repeating themselves over and over again in her heart: Leo. Siena. Tourmaline. Leo and Siena, her grandparents’ legacy—the memories in her locket, which Crier had, and the second locket, which Kinok had somehow gotten his hands on.
One thing was becoming clear. The only way to keep going, to keep fighting, was to learn more about her past.
And she knew just where to start. Storme.
Which meant they were headed to Varn. Whose borders on land were closed—but not the ones by sea.
“We’re almost there,” she said to Benjy, setting her eyes on a narrow alley between two buildings, a place to wait out the guards. “You all right?”
He shuddered. “I’ll be fine. Just keep going.”
“Always,” she said. “Always.”
25
During the journey to the Midwifery, as she sat alone in the carriage, Crier came to a conclusion. Even after everything that had happened, after what Ayla had tried to do. Crier still loved her. Maybe she had loved her ever since the moment Ayla had saved her life on the cliff so many weeks ago.
Crier had been Designed. Crier was Made. But in the moment Ayla first touched her, Crier had learned what it felt like to be born.
She’d asked Ayla once what love felt like.
I don’t remember, Ayla had answered, lacing up Crier’s dress. Crier could still recall the way her rough, calloused fingertips had brushed across her shoulder blades.